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Daily Archives: December 11, 2016

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14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 10 December 2016 — For several years on International Human Rights Day, the Cuban government has strengthed its ideological battle on the internet with police operations around the country. The volume of epithets posted on social networks and the official slogans published in on-line forums offer a strong contrast to the poor access to the World Wide Web experienced by people on the island.

Cuba has one of the lowest internet penetration rates of the Western hemisphere, with fewer than 5% of the population connected, but this Saturday its presence on the web will surpass that of other more connected nations. The authorities have prepared an avalanche of messages of support to spread what they call "the human rights enjoyed by Cuban youth."

For the virtual offensive they have called on university students, members of the Young Communist Union, and teenagers in high school. The political battle on the network will be accompanied by activities and celebrations in dozens of parks and plazas throughout the country.

"I have to go, but variety is the spice of life; because I publish on Twitter they asked me to take advantage of it and connect with some friends on Facebook," a student majoring in History at the University of Havana, who is participating in the digital offensive, told this newspaper.

The official press has called the day a "hornet's nest" that is held under the slogan "My Cuba with rights." The activities not only address the National Day for Human Rights, but also plan a tribute to "the chief defender of the humble, Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz," according to the announcement.

The activities planned for Saturday also include sports competitions, cultural shows, book sales and presentations of audiovisual materials. The sites chosen for the celebrations coincide in many cases with points where the opposition traditionally demonstrates during the Human Rights Day.

University Law Professor Luis Sola Vila spoke on the Legal segment of the morning news magazine, saying that "in our country the Universal Declaration of Human Rights went into effect with the triumph of the Revolution, undeniably."

Sola Vila noted that Cuba is a signatory to several treaties, including those against torture, discrimination against women and racial discrimination, but omitted that the government of the island has not yet ratified the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Amid the intense ideological campaign on display in the official media for the occasion, conspicuously absent has been any reference to the rights of association or freedom of expression.

From the early morning hours several activists denounced police operations around their homes and warnings from State Security not to go out into the street. At dawn the headquarters of the Ladies in White in the Havana neighborhood of Lawton was surrounded by political police, according to a report from the dissident Angel Moya.

Officialdom expects to mark another ideological victory on this Human Rights Day, keeping the opposition forces under control, deploying an army of followers on the internet, and staging prepared celebrations in Cuban parks.

Carlos Alberto Montaner, 10 December 2016 — Raúl Castro is on his own. Gone is his mentor, his paternal figure, the man who molded his life and led him at gunpoint — literally — from insignificance to the nation's leadership. But he did so brusquely, reminding him every so often that he despised him for his intellectual limitations. That never ceased to hurt Raúl.

Many years ago, Raúl realized that Fidel was the revolution's essential stumbling block — his arbitrary voluntarism, his stubborn foolishness, his improvisations, the odious way in which he wasted time in interminable conversations and perorations. But he also knew that without Fidel there would have been no revolution. On one hand, he admired him; on the other, he rejected him. There was something monstrous and fascinating in a person who talked for eight consecutive hours without the least concession to his bladder or that of the defenseless interlocutor.

Nevertheless, life had taught Raúl that a deeper problem existed: Marxism-Leninism, in which he believed blindly in his youth, and the reason he killed others without compunction, was a misguided doctrine that led to gradual impoverishment.

If Fidel had been different, or if relations with Washington had been a lot better, nothing essential would have changed. The unproductiveness of the system did not depend on the leader's errors or character, or the economic embargo, but on the system's lack of adaptation to human nature. It always fails.

The same had happened in the Soviet Union, in East Germany, in Czechoslovakia, in Poland. Whether the subjects were Slavs, Germans or Latins made no difference. Romania had been granted "most-favored nation" status by the United States.

It mattered not whether communism was being tested on societies with Christian, Islamic or Confucian roots; it inevitably failed. Nor did it depend on the leaders' quality or formation. Their plumage could be varied: lawyers, union bosses, professors, teachers, even elevated labor activists. None was any good.

In addition, it was easy for Raúl to confirm that the market economy, with its simple way of rewarding the entrepreneurs and punishing the lazy, gave large though unequal fruit. His own father, Galician Ángel Castro Argiz, was a living example: he arrived in the Republic of Cuba at a young age without a penny, even without education, but at his death in 1956 he left a fortune consisting of $8 million and an organized agricultural business that employed dozens of people.

The issue now facing Raúl is how to dismantle the horrid contraption generated by his brother and himself almost 60 years ago without being buried in the rubble of that useless system. By now he knows that his "guidelines," which is how his timid, sometimes puerile reforms are called in Cuba, are ill-placed Band-Aids stuck on a socialist system beyond salvation, a system made worse by military management in all its economic activities nationwide. But he has said, over and again, that he didn't replace his brother to bury socialism but to save it.

I suppose he already knows that communism is beyond salvation. It has to be buried. That's what Mikhail Gorbachev discovered when he tried to rescue it by applying drastic reforms: perestroika — giving it a transparent air of fearless discussion — and glasnost –convinced that it could be the best productive system created by human beings.

In a few years, Gorbachev's salvage operation sank communism, not through the clumsiness of the rescue team but through the system's insolvency and the poor theoretical formulation of Marxism-Leninism. Central planning was a bungle. Keeping the mechanisms of production from private hands was counterproductive. The committees for the assignation of prices were totally unaware of the people's needs or reality. The constant presence of the political police destroyed coexistence and generated all kinds of psychological ills.

When Raúl Castro read "Perestroika," Gorbachev's book, he became so enthused that he ordered a special edition just for his officers. Fidel found out, scolded him in a humiliating manner and recalled all copies. Fidel was not interested in the people's material well-being but in his own permanence in power. Gorbachevism, he said, would lead to the disappearance of communism.

He was right, but only half right. Raúl is at the same crossroads where Gorbachev stood, but with the added flaw that today almost no one — much less the profound idiots — thinks that communism can be saved. At least, none of the nations that have managed to abandon it has reversed that decision. They learned their bitter lesson. For now, the symptoms show that Raúl will maintain the same Stalinist course drawn by his brother, but there's a difference: Fidel is no longer alive. He is buried in a huge rock at Santa Ifigenia cemetery. If Raúl doesn't rectify that course, he is a coward.

Dimas Castellano, 5 December 2016 — The majority of analysts looking at the change of direction which may be experienced in the relations between Cuba and the United States, following the 8th of November elections, have concerned themselves solely with the policies on Cuba to be pursued by the new occupant of the White House, ignoring the fact that these are bilateral relations.

Their forecasts range from those who consider that Donald Trump will fulfill his electoral promise of going back on Barack Obama's policy, up to the possibility of an improved understanding with the Cuban authorities. In nearly all cases, the emphasis is on what the new President will do, as if the Cuban side of things had nothing to do with what could happen from next 20th of January onwards.

A retrospective analysis of relations between the two administrations indicates otherwise. Taking into account the fact that the Cuban people don't have human or political rights to influence that process, and that the weakness of the emerging civil society makes it difficult for it to take the role of an opposition, the analysis has to limit itself to intergovernmental relations.

Appealing to electoral populism is one thing, and leading the greatest power in the world is another. Setting back the development in re-establishing relations during Barack Obama's presidency will be extremely difficult. The institutionalisation of public powers, the existence of diverse sectors with interests in our island, and regional interests in the face of incursions by other powers, will hinder it. In those conditions the President-elect could limit of eliminate some things, but he could not nullify everything, because it would affect his country's own interests.

The re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States – the most important political act since the 1959 revolution – responds to the interests of both nations. The supposition that Trump constitutes a threat to the relations which the Barack Obama administration succeeeded in moving forward is one side of the coin. The brake applied by the Cuban government to the advances is the other side.

The obstinate obsession with dragging everything into public ownership, centralised production, and the absence of liberties for Cubans, are among the principal causes of the crisis in which Cuba finds itself. The Obama administration's policy offered an opportunity for change, which was missed by the Cuban side, to remove internal obstacles in the country. Therefore, along with the potential risk represented by the Trump administration, there is the real negative in the form of a Cuban government lacking the necessary political will to face up to the present situation. An insoluble contradiction consisting of changing and at the same preserving power.

Fidel Castro's thesis that "Cuba already changed, in 1959," produced a more pragmatic vision than General Raúl Castro's one of "changing some things to hold onto power." The measures implemented to that end over eight years have not brought about the desired result. Instead, they have revealed the unviability of the model and the depth of the crisis, in the face of which the only way forward is implementing major reforms.

If the series of measures enacted by the White House – including the Presidential Decision Directive of last October aimed at rendering irreversible the advances achieved – have not produced a better outcome, it is because they were not accompanied by the necessary measures on the Cuban side to free up production and restore civil liberties. For that reason, the solution for Cuba lies in its own authorities, as opposed to what might happen during the Trump administration. To tackle these changes now, albeit very late, would neutralise any intention to set things back on the part of the new occupant of the White House.

Bearing in mind that the suspension of the embargo is the prerogative of the United States Congress, what is needed now, after the "physical disappearance" of Fidel Castro, is to get on with a comprehensive structural reform, which should have been started a long time ago, commencing with, at least, what Vietnam did, with a crippled economy, in a country which had had, in ten years of war, three times the number of bombs dropped on it than were used in the Second World War, where 15% of the population perished or were injured in the struggle, with 60% of the villages in the south destroyed and which, after the war ended, confronted the economic blockade and frontier attacks, and, instead of ideological campaigns, launched reforms.

The Granma daily of November 4th, in a report entitled The Vietnam of the Future, says that the province of Binh Duong, previously mostly agricultural, is now predominantly industrial. This province has more than 2,700 projects funded by foreign investment; its GDP is, since 2010, increasing at an annual 14%; it boasts 28 industrial parks with factories constructed by companies from more than 30 countries; in the last two years it has launched nearly 370 new investment projects, and, between 1996 and now it has created more than 90,000 jobs.

The same paper, on 11th November, published The Miracle of the Vietnam Economy, where it reported that the World Bank had placed Vietnam among the most successful countries, which had, in 30 years, tripled per capita income, between 2003 and the present had reduced the level of those in poverty from 59% to 12%, and, in 20 years, had lifted more than 25 million people from destitution. It added that in 1986 the average Vietnamese income was between $15 and $20 a month and now varies between $200 and $300, and that in 1986 they eliminated centralised control and implemented a market economy, with a socialist orientation.

With these results, the United States suspended the embargo which lasted 30 years. In 2008 they directed their efforts to exiting the list of developing countries, in 2010 established the objective of entering the group of countries with medium income, in 2014 they found themselves among the 28 highest exporters in the world, and in 2016, they approved measures to convert themselves into an industrialised nation.

In that same time period, Cuba anchored itself in the past, with a policy of "Rectifying errors and negative tendencies," and managed to get the United Nations to condemn the embargo for a period of 25 years. Now, we have to lay out millions of dollars on importing food which we could produce in Cuba, and, after teaching the Vietnamese how to grow coffee, we have to buy the beans.

Cubans streaming into U.S. before Trump can take office Experts say the current influx will rival the previous peak in 1980. BY FRANCO ORDONEZ TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON — The surge of Cubans fleeing to the United States could grow as uncertainty swirls around the island about whether Donald Trump will end the still nascent U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba once he becomes president.

Experts say the current influx of Cubans, which is already double the rate that existed before relations were restored at the end of 2014, could rival the 1980 Mariel boatlift, especially if Trump fiddles with the special privileges Cuban immigrants receive from the United States. Trump and some Cuban-American leaders such as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have suggested curbs on those privileges.

"Our biggest fear should be another Mariel," said Eduardo Gamarra, who helped arriving Mariel refugees in the 1980s and now is a professor of international relations at Florida International University. "I'm not saying it's going to be another Mariel, but we should be prepared. The notion of opening gave people hope. Closing doesn't give anyone hope. Closing gives them fear."

The United States is already undergoing one of the greatest influx of Cubans since the 1980 Mariel boatlift when Fidel Castro allowed more than 125,000 Cubans to leave the country amid a weakened economy.

In the days since, there have been signs of anxiety among ordinary Cubans, who lined up outside the U.S. embassy in Havana on the day after Republican Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election. The Cuban government followed with an announcement that the military would be conducting tactical exercises to prepare troops.

The death of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro a few days later and the struggles of the Cuban economy have increased uncertainty on the island.

Groups that assist Cuban migrants such as Church World Service have made sure they have additional places for refugees to stay if they see an uptick in arrivals. Miami schools are ready for another "potential influx." Between July 2015 and January 2016, Miami-Dade schools enrolled more than 13,000 foreign-born students, most of whom were from Cuba.

LIFE AFTER CASTRO AT MIAMI'S MOST FAMOUS CUBAN RESTAURANT By Gabe Ulla December 10, 2016

On the night of November 25th, the owners of Versailles, Miami's most famous Cuban restaurant, were at a Thanksgiving gathering when their phones buzzed with a news alert: Fidel Castro was dead. Nicole Valls, who helps run the restaurant with her father and grandfather, was used to false alarms; since 2006, when rumors of the leader's ill health first circulated, she'd been keeping a folder in the trunk of her car containing protocol for Versailles in the event of Castro's passing. Now, once she'd confirmed that Castro was really dead this time, she ran to grab the folder from her car and texted the restaurant's managers with instructions: the parking lot would have to be cleared to make room for the many news vans that had reserved spaces for the occasion. In the early hours of the 26th, crowds surrounded Versailles, waving Cuban flags, banging out clave rhythms on pots and pans, and joining in chants in Spanish, including "P'arriba, p'abajo, los Castros p'al carajo"—"Up and down, and the Castro brothers can go to hell." The next day, when celebrations resumed, the restaurant ran out of croquetas by noon.

Nicole's paternal grandfather, Felipe Valls, Sr., opened Versailles, on Little Havana's Calle Ocho, in 1971, and in the decades since the restaurant has outlasted most of the local competition. The family today owns forty restaurants around the city, including one just down the block. But it's their flagship restaurant that has become a de-facto town square for generations of Miami's Cuban community, and the media's go-to place for assessing the state of Cuban-American relations. The Cuban author Carlos Alberto Montaner, a close friend of the Valls family, told me, "How can you effectively reach the exiled community, an abstract concept of two million people spread throughout the world? Versailles is a concrete place that gives sense and form to that abstraction, and the media understand that."

The restaurant has been an obligatory stop for politicians on the campaign trail since 1986, when the Florida politician Bob Graham, during his run for governor, put on a busboy uniform and worked a shift, wiping down tables and refilling water glasses. In 2000, the restaurant became a fixture of TV news segments during the custody battle over Elián González, when Cuban-Americans in the region rallied behind the boy's family members in Miami. And in March, when Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. President since Calvin Coolidge to visit Cuba, a group of protesters set up shop across the street from the restaurant, holding signs with messages like "Obama Miserable Comunista." If Donald Trump attempts to undo Obama's thawing of relations, as he has suggested he might, media outlets will look to the reactions of Versailles patrons.

But the Valls family knew that the most frenzied activity would come in the wake of Castro's death. In "The Versailles Restaurant Cookbook," published two years ago, Nicole Valls and her co-author, the local food and television personality Ana Quincoces, explained that one of the traditions of Versailles customers, especially at its outdoor café window, or ventanita, is "plotting Fidel Castro's death." Each time rumors surfaced that Castro had died, they wrote, "people flocked to the restaurant in droves to confirm the story and to celebrate the possibility that it might be true."

Though my own father liked to slyly refer to Versailles by the nickname El Pentágono, for much of my early life I viewed the restaurant less as a political nerve center than as a place to get consistently good plates of ropa vieja with rice and sweet plantains. Versailles is where my parents, Cuban exiles who left the island in the early sixties and eventually settled in New York, would take the family for dinner whenever we visited cousins in Miami. The restaurant is open until 1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and even later on weekends, so we'd go there after parties when every other place was closed. The restaurant's many dining rooms are adorned with chandeliers and other faux-opulent homages to pre-revolutionary Havana, but Versailles, which has about four hundred seats, is really a cafeteria, a protean meeting ground with an inexpensive and expansive menu, plastic breadbaskets, and vinyl chairs. Like the long-standing Galatoire's or Commander's Palace, in New Orleans, it is a place for regulars who like to stick to their habits. A group of elderly exiles known as the Teen-agers eats lunch there every weekday, and devotees request specific tables based on the strength of the air-conditioning.

It is these old-timers whose political sentiments help to set the tone of Versailles's coverage in the media. On Election Night, when it became clear that Trump would be the victor, a celebration erupted outside of the restaurant. Though the Cuban-American vote in Florida tipped in favor of the Republican candidate, a majority of Cuban-Americans support Obama's policies toward the island. But the news stories from Versailles depicted a scene of pro-Trump fervor. Ana María Dopico, a Cuban-American professor at N.Y.U., told me that the media's relentless focus on Versailles ends up selling a "caricature" of Cuban-American political feeling. The population of the Cuban-American community in Miami-Dade, a Democratic county, hovers close to a million. "The illusion of Versailles as a village square obscures how varied Cuban Miami is, and that Cuban-Americans are not a monolith," she said.

The Mexican-American journalist and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who has lived in Miami since 1986, told me he'd found the post-Castro moment in Little Havana surprisingly subdued. Twenty years ago, when Castro seemed "all-powerful on the island," there was a feeling that his passing could instantly provoke change, and inspire a mass immigration back to the island. "There is honor and dignity in confronting the dictator and outlasting the dictator," Ramos said. But Castro ceded power to his brother Raúl in 2008, and the lessons of post-Hugo Chávez Venezuela made clear that a Cuba without Fidel wouldn't necessarily mean the end of Castrismo. Felipe Valls, Jr., Nicole's father and the current head of the company, suggested a similar sense of ruefulness: "Castro lived a long time, and we weren't able to say, in his face, 'This is the new Cuba, and screw you.' " Exactly what Castro's death, and Trump's rise, will mean for Cuban-American relations remains uncertain. Versailles, more than providing campaign stops or media sound bites, will be most useful as a place for Cuban-Americans to process their continued sense of displacement—the trauma and complicated pride that stem from having roots in a country that an increasing number of Miamians never experienced firsthand.

A week and a half after Castro's death, my parents and I all happened to be in Miami, and I went to sit with them one evening as they ate dinner at Versailles. The room was full. At one table nearby, four grandmothers drank batidos, or milkshakes, with their main courses. I picked at some croquettes, while my dad inhaled a plate of braised oxtail and my mom had filet mignon. At one point, our waiter, a man in his forties wearing the staff's signature white dress shirt and green cravat, came by to check on us. I asked him about the celebrations earlier in the week, and when he expected Versailles's next big party would be. "When Raúl goes, I guess," he said.

Azamara Club Cruises' first Cuba trip set for March Gene Sloan , USA TODAY 3:20 p.m. EST December 9, 2016

Azamara Club Cruises will operate its first voyage to Cuba on March 21.

The sailing will be a 13-night trip from Miami that includes an overnight stay in the Cuban capital of Havana along with visits to Key West and Tampa, Fla.; New Orleans; and Cozumel, Mexico, the small-ship line announced Friday. The voyage will take place on the 686-passenger Azamara Quest.

For now, the March sailing will be the only Cuba cruise on Azamara's schedule, but the line said it is looking to add additional voyages to the island nation.

Azamara and its sister brand Royal Caribbean received approval for Cuba sailings on Wednesday from the Cuban government but at the time did not announce itinerary plans.

Royal Caribbean on Friday said its first trip to Cuba will take place in April.

The parent company of Oceania Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line also received approval for Cuba trips on Wednesday. The lines will begin trips to the country in March, April and May, respectively.

The Cuba calls planned by the lines will provide an opportunity for "people-to-people" exchanges between Americans and Cubans as allowed by U.S. rules governing visits to Cuba, the companies have said.

While the Obama administration has loosened restrictions on travel to Cuba over the past year, U.S. visitors still are limited in the activities they are allowed to do in the country by the terms of the USA's five-decade-old embargo. The embargo specifies that activities fall within one of 12 approved categories. The categories include educational pursuits such as people-to-people exchanges.

Fares for Azamara's new Cuba voyage start at $2,799 per person. It is open for booking as of today.

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